Cactus Jumpers

by Andrew Burch

Overview

The town of Emerald, California is a quiet, mostly peaceful place. The struggle for power between Moss Williams, the head of the Rancher's Association, and Skip Traeger, the local business tycoon who owns half the town goes mostly unnoticed by the townsfolk until a body turns up in the water hole. Now, Marshal Mason Boydette has to get to the bottom of the biggest mystery Emerald has ever seen. But the Marshal isn't alone. Along the way, he'll try to get help from his trusty deputy, an unorthodox trio of drifters who blow into town, the local minister, and a town full of people who are forced to make a choice between justice and the easy way out. Everyone's lives are turned upside-down, and everyone must take sides before it is to late and their entire way of life disappears forever. About the Author Andrew Burch was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Connecticut, but his heart belongs to the West, his wife, Sofiya's, original home. He began watching westerns in the 70s in the heyday of John Wayne and still enjoys watching The Riflemen, Big Valley, and Gunsmoke in syndication, taking his inspiration from the classics rather than modern, grittier, and morally ambiguous tales of the Old West. Andrew is an avid sports fan who claims to be a scratch golfer-at the end of every round, he scratches out his score so no one else can read it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781480912076
Publisher:	Dorrance Publishing Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)

Editorial Reviews

2015-05-07
A marshal, a minister, and a group of drifters confront a powerful rancher and an ambitious businessman over a woman's murder in a 19th-century California town.In this debut novel, Burch draws on classic Western tropes to build a complex narrative about the fight between right and wrong. When a woman's body is found in a lake near the town of Emerald, marshal Mason and minister Emmett set out to solve her murder, and their fight for justice brings them up against ruthless rancher Moss and developer Traeger, who maintain control over the town and many of its residents. When Trace, Jade, and Crystal—a white man and two African-American women, all accustomed to fighting for themselves and living on the road—arrive in Emerald, they bring their weaponry skills and complicated sense of ethics to the conflict as well. The many characters' histories—Emmett's career in a Wild West show, Traeger's rebellion against his father, etc.—are gradually revealed, providing explanations for the plot's many complexities, and everything comes together in a traditional shootout on the streets of Emerald. The writing suffers from lack of editing, however, including misused punctuation, incorrect verb tenses, and awkward prose: "It was a subtle and unconscious thing, but not unnoticeable, that Mason addressed Billy first and directed his question to the foreman as well." While the primary and secondary characters are far more diverse than in many traditional Westerns, they are often reduced to stereotypes (as in one character's "hot Mexican temper"), and Jade and Crystal remain "exotic" beauties until their histories and personalities are developed in the book's second half. The book still succeeds in developing a strong sense of place that evokes Bonanza and John Wayne movies.A traditional Western that embraces the clear division between right and wrong, the role of the hero, and the power of redemption, though the resulting narrative needs a bit more polish.

Kirkus Reviews